5 Tiles Keyboard • Hacker News Board

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#31

Post by cool-RR » Sun, May 25, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

intull wrote: post #22

cool-RR wrote: post #11

Public service announcement to all companies that are trying to sell us keyboards or keyboard-like solutions: I fully expect, when I go into your site, to see a video of someone using your keyboard to type FAST. (Which is probably the most important criteria in a keyboard.) This is essential because if your own people who developed the keyboard can only get to X wpm, odds are low that your average users are going to…

They do have a video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUjBdMz1q8I

After viewing this video six times, I'd like someone to explain to me how the program knew to autocomplete "z" into "zippers" without consulting the users. Could it be that they've trained it for this specific sentence, making this entire video meaningless at best and a fraud at worst?

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#32

Post by gweinberg » Sun, May 25, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

It seems to me that four would be a much better number than five, since our thumbs do not line up with our fingers.

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#33

Post by smoyer » Sun, May 25, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

I sometimes do serious work from my Android phone and the keyboard is extremely important ... I haven't found anything that approaches the convenience of this keyboard: http://www.meritline.com/logitech-tablet-keyboard-android-92...

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#34

Post by Wilduck » Sun, May 25, 2014, 5:39 PM UTC

tsm wrote: post #10

On the subject of alternative keyboards, I've been using MessagEase ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exideas.me... ) for about a year and am pretty pleased with it. It's still roughly the size of a regular QWERTY keyboard, but the buttons are enormous, and I can type any letter, number, or symbol I care about without modifier keys. (It accomplishes this by differentiating between taps and short swi…

I've been using MessageEase too and I really like it. I was fed up with miss-keying on a standard Qwerty shaped on-screen keyboard, and I really haven't liked any predictive typing solutions I've tried.

What I like about MessageEase is that the keys are big enough that I don't ever miss what I'm typing, which eliminates the part of typing that slowed me down the most--going back and fixing typing errors. I can whip out a 160 character text message in about 30-40 seconds with correct capitalization and punctuation, which is about all I can ask for in a phone keyboard.

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#35

Post by Roboprog » Sun, May 25, 2014, 7:04 PM UTC

So it's like having 10 or 12 buttons to write a text, only worse???

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#36

Post by p4bl0 » Sun, May 25, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

adyda wrote: post #19

p4bl0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry I may be stupid but I still don't understand how the keyboard works after having seen that second video. Seriously they should make a video where we can see what happens on the keyboard and on the screen at the same time. Why every time the finger starts to slides the only letters left on the keyboard are "EABCD"? How do I type an 'n' for instance? I see that they do a round-trip to enter numbers, but how a…

Each of the 5 tiles represent a group of letters/numbers. The reason you see 'EABCD' is because he is only using the first (blue) tile. If you wanted to type 'n' you would put your finger on the yellow, which contains 'KLONM', and slide it to the fourth tile. The numbers I'm not sure. I think it is the same concept with 1-4 on the first tile (blue) and other numbers on other tiles. Still doesn't seem like it would be…

> he is only using the first (blue) tile

That's what I assumed too, but I didn't want to be sure of it because one have to be too stupid to do a demo of a product using always the same part. "Look I designed a keyboard and I can type with it: 'aaaaaaaaaaa'".

Okay, so it means that if I want to type 'n' I hit the 3rd tile and then I have to move four tiles away. Except I can't. So I guess I'll have to go backward when I reach the last tile in the direction I chose. But that seem to conflict with what I inferred for numbers…

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#37

Post by octaveguin » Sun, May 25, 2014, 8:11 PM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #23

cool-RR wrote: post #11

Public service announcement to all companies that are trying to sell us keyboards or keyboard-like solutions: I fully expect, when I go into your site, to see a video of someone using your keyboard to type FAST. (Which is probably the most important criteria in a keyboard.) This is essential because if your own people who developed the keyboard can only get to X wpm, odds are low that your average users are going to…

Fleksy. World record holder for SMS speed. If you haven't tried it, you owe it to yourself. They have a free demo for thirty days too.

Thanks for the suggestion. The stock android keyboard is super terrible so I'd been looking for a better one. This is by far the best I've found.

Most require a large learning curving. This one feels like the iOS one but it's a bit smoother.

Nice find!

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#38

Post by 1ris » Sun, May 25, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

Absolutly awesome. I tried serveral alternative keyboards since the day i own a smartphone, this is the first one I liked right from the start. Minuum seemed pretty lame, haven't tried it, but I tried Swype, Swiftkey, GKOS, 8Pen, and a morse-key keyboard. The latter was very neat in theory, but the learning curve was just to steep. Now, starting form thre and increasing the number of buttons from two to five and adding hints on for the fly is IMO genius. Two thumbs up. Now i want a smartwatch. I just wished there was a explanation what the difference between the light and the full version is.

/edit: And I think i have a bug: The Enter key does not work, or is that a limitation of the free edition? Could be, I will buy the full version tomorrow.

/edit2: No, it's just that i confused "enter" and "go".

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#39

Post by 1ris » Sun, May 25, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

techaddict009 wrote: post #8

Is is it inspired from Google's Gmail Tap April Fool Prank? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhZKNZO8mQ

There is such a keyboard, i used it, and i case you take the huddle of learning morse code (that is very hard and requires LOTs of pratice that i unfortunatly don't have) it's absolutly awesome. Eyes free typing. I think that shouldn't be a aprils fool.

Re: 5 Tiles Keyboard

#40

Post by moollaza » Sun, May 25, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

1ris wrote: post #38

Absolutly awesome. I tried serveral alternative keyboards since the day i own a smartphone, this is the first one I liked right from the start. Minuum seemed pretty lame, haven't tried it, but I tried Swype, Swiftkey, GKOS, 8Pen, and a morse-key keyboard. The latter was very neat in theory, but the learning curve was just to steep. Now, starting form thre and increasing the number of buttons from two to five and addi…

I really think you should give Minuum a try. I've used most of the ones you listed above (Swype, Swiftkey, 8Pen, Fleksy) and ended up sticking with Minuum. I've been using it for almost a year and don't regret switching. I used to love Swype, but it started to get pretty slow and once I switched to Minuum, it was nice to see how much screen space I could reclaim.